Pavlova Marina A, Heiz Julie, Sokolov Alexander N, Barisnikov Koviljka
Cognitive and Social Neuroscience Unit, Department of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance, Medical School, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen Germany.
Child Clinical Neuropsychology Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Geneva Switzerland.
Front Psychol. 2016 Aug 2;7:1131. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01131. eCollection 2016.
Many neurological, neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric, and psychosomatic disorders are characterized by impairments in visual social cognition, body language reading, and facial assessment of a social counterpart. Yet a wealth of research indicates that individuals with Williams syndrome exhibit remarkable concern for social stimuli and face fascination. Here individuals with Williams syndrome were presented with a set of Face-n-Food images composed of food ingredients and in different degree resembling a face (slightly bordering on the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style). The primary advantage of these images is that single components do not explicitly trigger face-specific processing, whereas in face images commonly used for investigating face perception (such as photographs or depictions), the mere occurrence of typical cues already implicates face presence. In a spontaneous recognition task, participants were shown a set of images in a predetermined order from the least to most resembling a face. Strikingly, individuals with Williams syndrome exhibited profound deficits in recognition of the Face-n-Food images as a face: they did not report seeing a face on the images, which typically developing controls effortlessly recognized as a face, and gave overall fewer face responses. This suggests atypical face tuning in Williams syndrome. The outcome is discussed in the light of a general pattern of social cognition in Williams syndrome and brain mechanisms underpinning face processing.
许多神经、神经发育、神经精神和身心障碍的特征是视觉社会认知、肢体语言解读以及对社交对象面部评估方面存在缺陷。然而，大量研究表明，威廉姆斯综合征患者对社交刺激表现出显著关注且对面部着迷。在此，让威廉姆斯综合征患者观看一组由食物成分构成、不同程度类似面部（略带朱塞佩·阿尔钦博托风格）的“面部与食物”图像。这些图像的主要优势在于单个成分不会明确触发特定面部处理，而在通常用于研究面部感知的面部图像（如照片或描绘）中，仅仅典型线索的出现就意味着面部存在。在一项自发识别任务中，按照从最不像面部到最像面部的预定顺序向参与者展示一组图像。令人惊讶的是，威廉姆斯综合征患者在将“面部与食物”图像识别为面部方面存在严重缺陷：他们没有报告在图像上看到面部，而典型发育的对照组能轻松将这些图像识别为面部，并且总体上面部反应较少。这表明威廉姆斯综合征患者存在非典型的面部调谐。根据威廉姆斯综合征社会认知的一般模式以及支撑面部处理的大脑机制对这一结果进行了讨论。
